Punishment and Justice

What should we do with those who commit heinous crimes? What about those who commit minor crimes?

Punishment as a deterrent--like any overt deterrent, I suppose--functions as a threat. If you misbehave, you will be hurt or slain, or something will be taken from you. Yet that isn't where punishment ends, psychologically: people feel a rage towards particularly vile criminals, a rage that is more of a bloodlust or "righteous" fury than anything else. In these moments, the thinking is not, "We must make a warning to keep others from doing this", but rather, "That bastard must pay!"

Someone who hurts others deserves to be hurt themselves. When paired with the view that those who do good deserve good themselves, this sentence is a very near relative to the Golden Rule. We see the sentiment naturally manifested in the Judeo-Christian punishment of sinners and reward of believers, and indeed, in Jesus's famous explicit formulation of the Golden Rule. Hinduism's principle of karma is another example; even if it's not seen as a "punishment" per se by the Hindus, clearly it stems from the same sort of thinking. More recently, the neo-Pagan/Wiccan Rule of Three tells us that our decisions, beneficent or maleficent, will be visited upon us again, with threefold consequences.

Nietzsche described the general punishment urge in depressingly incisive terms:

... to what extent can suffering be a compensation for “debts”? To the extent that making someone suffer provides the highest degree of pleasure, to the extent that the person hurt by the debt, in exchange for the injury as well as for the distress caused by the injury, got an extraordinary offsetting pleasure: creating suffering—a real celebration, something that, as I’ve said, was valued all the more, the greater it contradicted the rank and social position of the creditor. [1]

I would quibble with him here about harming others being "the highest degree of pleasure" for most people, but I think the general gist of this passage is right. Causing others to suffer, in certain contexts, brings pleasure which is supposed to "make up" for wrongs perpetrated against oneself. (If "pleasure" is too strong a word, then "satisfaction" may be substituted, though mayhap that sugarcoats the situation too much.)

Considered less aesthetically and more economically, as it were, one gets the impression that there exists some metaphysical balance or scale, upon which doing wrong tilts the scale; and this tilting must be accounted for. "Harm" or "hurt" is the currency being weighed here, and so a person (or, more usually, a government) does what would normally be "wrong" to a criminal, and thus the upset scale is righted.

When generalized and made normative, we call this meting out of harm for harm "justice". For Western culture, Lady Justice (Justitia) symbolizes the concept quite plainly: she carries a scale of judgment and a sword, the first for determining where and how much harm to dole out, and the second for applying it. In "civilized" societies, now that we feel a conflict between wanting wrongdoers to suffer and squeemishness about the dirty work that that entails, we do not directly apply punishments ourselves; instead, we license a certain body of people--viz., the government and its police force--to enact the tenets of justice, which is to say, the tenets of reciprocity. Not literal reciprocity in the sense of an eye for an eye, of course; we are sufficiently advanced that we can invent substitutes and equivalents such as fines and imprisonment. Or, in some dire cases, the punishment probably exceeds the crime quite excessively.

Actually, the vast majority of crimes don't incite much ire (bloodlust) in the average citizen, because the vast majority of crimes are misdemeanors that do not directly harm individuals.[2] Jay walking; smoking cigarettes in a non-smoking area; smoking marijuana; downloading and sharing copyrighted material illegally on the internet; most other forms of copyright infringement; violating the terms of agreement in a competition or an online game by cheating; minor speeding or another small traffic offence; violating a zoning ordinance, that sort of thing. While opponents of drug use agree abstractly that smoking marijuana deserves punishment, I do not think they actively feel rage when they see or hear of such use, as long as it is not, say, "contributing to their children's delinquency". Players of an online game may feel that cheaters should be banned from the game--and in a fit of passion, perhaps more than that--but they typically do not believe that cheaters should be fined or locked up. (Indeed, perhaps these aren't even "misdemeanors" or "infractions", although most of the time legal agreements have clearly been broken.)

Along the continuum of wrongdoing, two things influence a bloodthirsty emotional reaction: personal impact, which is to say, how much an individual is personally affected by it, and severity or depravity of the crime. The former is more of a selfish thing, perhaps, insofar as we tend to care less about vandalism when it is not our very own property or part of a public space we care about. The latter is more universal or normative insofar as we can be riled up by hearing about child molesters, serial killers, or any perpetrator who inspires serious revulsion in us in spite of our own lack of personal investment in the matter.

[1] The Genealogy of Morals, more specifically the online edition here, because I'm lazy. Second essay, §6.

[2] "Misdemeanor" may not be the appropriate legal term here. "Infraction" or "regulatory offence" might be better. I should also add that whether another person is directly harmed or not can be argued in each of the following examples, but hopefully you can put that aside or mentally substitute your preferred examples as necessary.

Hunting Contradictions

In the context of time (temporality), change may be characterized by a fact or state of affairs holding at some time t which does not hold at some other time t'. That is to say, at t=0, proposition P is true; but at t+1, P is not true. From this, we may say time "allows" a contradiction (P&~P) to exist by spreading it out: the conflicting natures of P and ~P may coexist as long as they are "side by side" and not in the "same place", temporally.

With the above scare-quotes, I meant to emphasize the use of spatial metaphor in characterizing time; and this leads directly to the other pathway toward contradiction. A proposition and its contrary may exist simultaneously if they are separated from one another spatially; and this is such a natural part of existence that we hardly ever think of it. Expressed more intuitively, this simply means that things are different, when you look around yourself. The universe is not 100% homogeneous. Expressed a bit more formally, we say that (P&~P) can obtain at one and the same time t, if P and ~P occur respectively in different spatial regions.

In short, I am saying that contradictions are apparently possible when they are separated by space or time; that is, when they do not share identical space-time coordinates.

A counter question, however, is whether these are really "contradictions" if specified precisely enough. Suppose one says, "The space-time point (x,y,z,t) is [tense-lessly] filled (by some entity)".* If one pose against it the statement, "The space-time point (x,y,z,t) is empty", there is nowhere left "to go" in order to escape contradiction. To allow contradictions, according to my foregoing claims, one proposition must vary in time or space from another; but since we have exactly specified identical space-time coordinates, the contradiction is impossible. (This follows, at least in spirit, Quine's comments on temporal logic.)

* I seem to recall that some philosopher or other popularized the use of several tense-less terms and syntaxes, but I have no idea who it was or what the details of it are, now. I would be much obliged if anyone could point me in the right direction.

So, in response to the above question, I actually must agree: if we prevent them from "colliding", contradictions aren't really contradictions after all. This is trivially true, and hardly new information, but I like to think I have presented a slightly different framework for thinking about the matter.

A more interesting question might be, "Does this apply to all propositions?" I think the answer must be an assured "No", because not all propositions have to do with space-time per se, and thus this avenue of approach is not available. For example, "1=1" seems to be a general claim, without reference to any particulars, and it is hard to see how we could situate such a claim in the above schemes.

I think we can fairly safely conclude that a "robust" or fully specified contradiction is impossible, simply by definition; but we may be led to wonder whether there aren't other "channels" beyond the four of space-time which one might slide along to allow apparent contradictions. It strikes me that, should we ever somehow encounter a "real life contradiction" or paradox (whatever that would be like), we could, and likely would, posit a new channel of metaphorical space in which the contradictory elements could be separated. (We may speak of these as "dimensions", but I am cautious of using that word thanks to its abuse by overly enthusiastic New Age sorts and science fiction writers.)

Thinking vs Acting

I still don't understand exactly the "internal" difference between doing and just..... thinking about doing. Imagining it.

If I now intend to make a physical action, such as wiggle one of my toes, there's something happening in my mind that precedes that action--an anticipatory "planning" or intention stage. (If I remember correctly, studies by Benjamin Libet suggest that we don't even become conscious of our brain's decision to initiate an action until some 200-500ms after our brain starts setting it in motion.) But I can think about wiggling a toe without actually doing it--in fact, that's what I'm doing now as I make these observations, and what you the reader will likely be doing as these words call forth involuntary recollections in your mind. I can imagine wiggling a toe, even. Since most of us are such visual creatures, this will probably be first and foremost a mentally created image of my own toe wiggling (somehow); as I add detail to the imagining, I can recall the other sensations that accompany such a feat: the quale of my toe shifting position, the accompanying movement of my skin, the small shifts in texture or whatever that my skin will register if my movement causes it to encounter new surfaces/objects, etc.

I can even try to mentally re-create (simulate) the very willing, or whatever it is, that causes genuine movement. I can do this at a somewhat intuitive level, I think, but I feel I have a very poor grasp on what is actually happening.

Now, the curious thing about my imaginings here, is that imagining itself is another type of action; so, while I'm tinkering with how my mind translates thought into action, I am meanwhile doing just that in order to "experiment" at all. (Proper scientists will be horrified to here such phenomenological investigation referred to as "experimentation", but hey, I'm not talking about proper scientific experiments in this context.)

It seems that there is always some kind of buffer or gap that I cannot quite cross here.

Inquiry Into Impossibility

(Briefly).

I am a being with desires. Roughly, this means that I, as a sentient system, feel impelled to relieve an urge. So, I create a mental simulation of some thing, some state of affairs that differs from the current state of the world, that I expect (or hope) will alleviate that urge.

A simple example: Debra is hungry. Instinct and memory tell her that moving her body so as to bring comestibles to her mouth and chew (+ swallow, etc.) will make her less hungry. Thus, her object of desire is a state where she has eaten food, or where her stomach is full, or something to that effect.

The fundamental principle, as everyone already knows, is that actions modify our environment, and our bodies consequently reward us – with dopamine and the diminishment of urge – through modifying the environment in particular ways.

What happens, now, if I desire something impossible?

Let me sit and contemplate a bowl of fruit. My desire is for one of the fruit – a mango, perhaps – to be in my hand. I have, then, a clearly defined goal (a simulated aspect of the environment which will sate my want), and all that remains is to use the power of action to translate object of desire into actuality. Common sense says I should move myself within range of the bowl (if I'm not there already), extend an arm, and pick it up. However, my desire is slightly more complex than that: I want to achieve my goal without going through those steps. Part of my envisioned goal includes the condition that I collect the mango in the absence of gross physical movement.

There might be other options: maybe I have a friend (or servant) nearby who will interpret a very slight gesture on my part as a request for the mango. Or maybe there's a mechanical hand and conveyor belt set up that leads directly to my own biological hand, and it is activated through some minute action – moving my eyes or blinking in a particular pattern, for example.

But let's say none of these things have been arranged: the most likely situation is that I'm sitting in place alone, unaided, merely willing the mango to somehow appear in my hand through no great effort of my own.

That this should happen is improbable to the point of impossibility.

So, I review my options: supposing that I stubbornly stick to my original constraints (no gross physical movement), there is little to nothing that I can do to change the situation. To effect change, action is required; and only a particular subset of available actions leads to particular (desired) outcomes. If the set of actions-available-to-me happens to be disjoint to the set of actions-leading-to-my-goal, it seems I am utterly powerless. There must be overlap between those categories, otherwise it is logically impossible for me to achieve my goal through action.

Is there any other way to achieve a goal than through action? By the very nature of the word "achieve", I think the answer is no. Is it possible for me to accomplish something while doing nothing? Pace Laozi, the very idea reeks of contradiction. "But," I protest, "I am doing something – I'm thinking and simulating." The problem is that, apparently, thinking and simulating exert no influence on the universe if they are not accompanied by physical forces to realize their aims. Alone, they do not overlap with very many sets of actions-that-lead-to-goals at all.

How can I shape the universe to match my desires? Only through the channels that the universe allows me. And so the question becomes, how can I change those channels?

Why we're here

It doesn't seem as though the universe should exist. It is common to think there should be a reason--a truthmaker--for why the universe exists as opposed to not existing.

Which is a mighty peculiar thing, since we've certainly never had any observations of a non-existent universe, nor can we even properly imagine it (in my opinion). All we have is the assumption that the pre-natal and natural state of anything is non-existence, or absence; accordingly, there must be something else, some kind of metaphysical mechanism, that causes that non-existence to become existence.

This stems from our observations about causality, perhaps coupled with innate physical intuitions. Maybe it isn't so peculiar to have this belief, then, since every time that we witness an effect in everyday life, it is preceded (anteceded) by a cause. Hence cosmological arguments; hence the conclusion that there must have been either a single "unmoved mover" or an infinite chain of antecedent causes to explain the universe's existence. Well, that or the universe shouldn't exist at all, being causeless.

I wonder if we're really justified in this conclusion. We have never witnessed something come from nothing (which is presumably what must have happened when a pure void became material substance?) but then... we have truthfully never witnessed "nothing". As our scientific instruments grow more and more powerful, we end up discovering that even that which has appeared empty before--vacuums, space--is nonetheless filled with a frothing mass of virtual particles and other bizarre fauna of the micro-universe. (See, e.g., this Wikipedia article on the vacuum state).

And if there is always something there materially... I guess then we have to suppose that those minute, practically non-existent material bits must be able to exert causal influence on other bits of matter. In that case, how can we be sure that it's even physically possible for the universe (or at least matter) not to exist? Maybe it is logically possible, infosofar as we can imagine it (which I have my doubts about, as I said before). Metaphysically possible? Hmmm....

Consider another Easter egg laid by the goose of science: the first law of thermodynamics. The total amount of energy in an isolated system must remain constant, though it may change form. (Similarly so with physical information, as came up in the black hole information paradox. I believe the conservation of one quantitiy--information or energy--may be derived from the other.) If the universe is an isolated system, and if we presume that this law holds invariably, then we must conclude that the universe has always existed--or rather that the energy within it has always existed, which is close enough for our purposes, since energy may be converted to matter.

Thus, the laws of physics do not allow the energy of the universe to come into or out of existence--thus, we must presume it has always existed.

But then, all I'm doing is shifting the question back a step. Now we ask instead, "Why is it that the total energy in the universe equals a positive value, not a zero or negative value?"

I don't know. Should we expect there to be a reason that gravity exists? That time exists? Some physicists do look for causes there, I suppose. And to a certain degree, we may get explanations about gravity and other forces as they (we think) split off from a single unified source in the very early universe. Still, if we accept that laws or forces need no justification for their existence, maybe we shouldn't expect a justification for the existence of energy either?

Edit as of 07-05-2009: I should clarify that under some theories, the total energy of the universe actually does add up to zero; it just that the way it's distributed gives us the material and energy formations we're used to. (I think gravity is typically suggested as the negative counterpart for the energy released during the Big Bang. Here's a handy and relevant (though brief) link for further reading).

Following From

[I wish that I had the interest/dedication to actually pursue these thoughts more rigorously by studying existent philosophical work on the topic, but alas.]

Consider a state governed by absolutely no physical or metaphysical laws. Does this mean anything can happen? Or for "something to happen", does that require that there be something to guide or direct "happenings"?

Natural laws, of course, probably don't "guide" action by any means. They're simply descriptions of how phenomena behave. But... how do phenomena "know" how to behave? What makes them behave in a particular way versus some other way?

I suppose I'm inquiring about how causation works in general--what exactly goes on when some observed or postulated event (which we call the antecedent) is supposed to cause, or in some way be responsible for, another event (the consequent). (As a side note, "event" is too loose of a term. Really, I suppose I mean "states of affairs" or "sets of circumstances" that obtain at a certain point in time. But event is a bit quicker to write, and most of the discussion examples that I can think of are events in the more standard sense too.)

If nothing else, we can at least say that human minds (and thus what we call rational thought) work best thinking under the following paradigm: to understand how/why a circumstance came to be, the circumstance must have followed from, or been enabled by, a pre-existing framework. {{And it is this necessity of thought unchecked that Kant rebukes in his Critique. The search for the unconditioned condition--a final explanation--the prime mover--God--is an attempt to step outside of the infinite regress that otherwise results, and thus to give us a circumstance which needs no further explanation. Kant (perhaps rightfully) claims that reason oversteps its justifiable boundaries when it tries to make this move.}} This paradigm seems to have served us fairly faithfully so far, but we cannot nonetheless discount the possibility that this fundamental "strategy" of thought might be flawed. {{As you will notice, the current topic is regrettably plagued by difficulty (impossibility?) of discussion. Like many other areas of philosophy, we are trying to grapple with notions that extend into the core of our most basic assumptions, and even trying to think about them will be difficult, much less to question their "accuracy".}}

What, however, does any of this mean? The ideas I suggest now may be completely nonsensical, possibly incoherent as well. And surely there is nothing to be gained by indulging nonsense.

I believe the question ties into (is enrooted in?) regress and the problem of finding first causes. Which in its own way mirrors the confusing interrelationship between objectivity and subjectivity.

Want? Choice?

Why is it so hard to be a particular way by choice?

Why is it that I cannot simply decide one day, hey, I want to accomplish X--and then pursue it?

Nothing prevents me.

Akrasia...?

Probability - BAH!

Yes.

Something vaguely bothers me about probability and the overall use of statistics as means for projecting and collecting data. And not just the fact that I find it harder to understand them than I believe I should, considering how comparatively simple their application and execution is.

I can't quite articulate what it is yet, and in any case it's likely that my worries here are pretty groundless, as with the concerns I've felt about other aspects of science and mathematics. But hey, the investigation is the fun part, right? And I truly seem to learn the most easily when I'm mentally "assailing" a position: hunting for weak points, discrepancies, internal conflicts, etc.

Cats and the Qualia of Happiness

My cat, having satisfied himself with the food available indoors, ambles back to the door and sits expectantly. He'll look up at the portal, look around, look at me occasionally. If I draw close, he'll rise up and paw the side of the door, possibly rub himself against me, make movements that seem to express a readiness to go forth. He meows on occasion, if the exit remains barred for too long.

As near as I can tell, he experiences a desire to go outside.

Would he feel pleasure from his desire being fulfilled, or would he simply feel relief from the pressing urge?

Why Do People Do Bad Things?

A question that has troubled humankind for as long as we've been able to formulate it, no doubt.

Let us consider a moral agent, Agent Q. (Not 007, no.)
Q commits an immoral act B (B for bad. Or maybe for /b/.).

Possibilities:

1. Q performs B because she doesn't know any better. She may have no conception or understanding of morality, or at least not the required kind of morality at hand here. Perhaps she is an animal or mindless drone and not a moral agent at all.
   
2. Q performs B but does not believe it is wrong. This is basically a variation of 2, only now I assume Q does understand why other people might think B is wrong, yet she disagrees. Maybe she's Nietzsche.
   
3. Q believes that B is wrong, yet she wants to benefit from B (in whatever way she does) badly enough to overcome any moral hestitations. She could be Judas, I suppose.
   
4. Q believes that B is wrong and does not think that B's selfish good will outweigh the evil it entails. Somehow, Q performs B nonetheless. Q now seems to be conflicted – was this a lapse of will (akrasia?) How do we account for what has happened? Did Q choose to do B? Why, when she knows that it's wrong?
   
5. Q had no genuine control over her actions.
   

The real one we're concerned with is naturally number 4. Why do I do (or does anyone) do that which disagrees with her own judgment?

Are we simply animals? Do we have impossible standards?
What gives here.

Leibnizesque Proclivities

I recently borrowed Bertrand Russell's A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, and I'm rather enjoying what little I've read of it so far.

One thing that struck me is the description (in the beginning) of Leibniz's disinclination toward publishing a fully developed system. Rather, it seems Leibniz tended to craft arguments in response to private correspondence, or to issues which he bore some personal connection to. Unfortunately, this makes giving a comprehensive take on his views a bit difficult, since most if it is fragmentary.

The amusing thing is that I think I find myself doing something similar. I rarely write for the sake of writing--I will always be most motivated to give an in-depth argument when it's directly in response to someone else, peculiarly enough.

Maybe I should work on that.

Must Perfection Equal Stagnation?

At various times I have encountered or myself espoused the view that anything which is perfect must be, in some sense, static. Religious critics might apply it to the idea of heaven, to show that any possible heaven must be a boring/stagnant place; similarly, we might argue that we're better off not being able to reach a state of complete perfection, because perfection would require no change, and therefore what would we do?

The reasoning goes something like this: for change to occur, an entity or circumstance must become other than it is currently. That is to say, at one time we may say of x that Px, while at another time we may say ~Px. So, if x is currently in a state of perfection but that state changes, surely that change now negates the previous, perfect state of x, thus rendering x imperfect.

An analogy with which we should all be familiar is grades: suppose a student has the perfect grade of 100% in the first week of a course. Suppose further that the teacher never allows extra credit, so at this moment the student possesses the highest grade attainable. From here on out, the only possible change to her grade would be to a lower value; so if at any point during the remainder of the semester, her grade experiences any form of change, it must be to a state of imperfection (< s100%).

So far, so good. If perfection be defined as having a grade equal to 100%, this is all true. Any change to that number necessarily yields an imperfect grade. The problem comes when we assume that, because the state of being perfect must not change, therefore nothing else pertaining to the object or circumstance in question can change. And that assumption is simply unwarranted.

To continue with the grade analogy, we should recognize that even while the total grade percentage does not change, a number of other factors do: as the school term progresses, the student continues to do assignments and turn them in. The teacher then grades these new assignments, sums the student's earned points so far, and divides that number into the highest possible point total. So while the grade percentage does not change, the student's earned sum continually rises. And of course, throughout the term, the course progresses, the student strives and sweats over homework, studies for tests, etc.

To me, this makes an obvious case that perfection can occur even while the qualities being judged for perfection change. In my example, the percentage remains at 100% even while the sums increase. This suggests the more general point that "perfection" can describe processes, not merely singular, unchanging states. Which really ought to be obvious, since, after all, we can easily set up (artificial) criteria for a perfect performance or the perfect execution of a technique in music, dance, etc. Yet clearly change does occur in these cases, for they are activities, not frozen states, after all.

Now, the point about lack of change is still true insofar as a perfect performance or process must never deviate from its perfect criteria on pain of falling from perfection. That is to say, the perfect student must continue to score 100% for as long as we judge her, and in this way her score will be predictable and therefore stagnant. However, we can hardly say that the student's homework and grade as a whole are stagnant, since she continues to accumulate new points and produce new work.

Similarly, I say that heaven would be static only insofar as its residents and contents would not deviate from a particular type of perfection; but their behavior could easily be a process or performance, or at least analogous to such. In simplistic terms, if perfection in heaven could be gauged as a percentage of points achieved out of points possible, the points could rise (or hey, they could fall too) without becoming imperfect so long as the total points possible matches them. It could be like a series of games in which one continually succeeds.


It is also important to note that, every time we talk about "perfection," we must qualify ourselves by answering the question, "Perfect according to what criteria?" Would it not be possible to have a constantly changing criteria set for perfection? And could there not easily be criteria which require change of some sort, as perhaps to run a perfect marathon requires that one change one's location and move one's limbs?

Silly details about numbers

The ancient Greeks found numbers fascinating in an unprecedented way (or so Morris Kline's Mathematics for the Nonmathematician informs me). Rather than adopting the more practical attitude of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians toward numbers, the Greeks recognized a conceptual beauty in the ability use the self-same methods on any possible collection of objects. That is to say, abstraction, and the universality thereof.

To assign a single, unique label to every quantity, and then to perform mental operations upon them which, amazingly, correctly modeled comparable situations in reality--astonishing. And I do mean that without irony.

Take a pie or any appropriately divisible object. Cut it into halves, then cut each half into thirds. We take it for granted today that the answer may be computed easily through a mechanical procedure: (1 * 1/2) * 1/3 = 1/6. This is to say that, without having made any cuts or further measurements, we already know with certainty what size the smaller pieces will be! (Or the size that they will approximate, because it is not an ideal world.)

But this is a fantastic discovery, for by beginning from only a few known facts, we discover what must be the case for physical objects after manipulating them--all without having left our armchairs.

Fallibility

Quantum mechanics tells us that the universe operates in very, very unusual ways. It is natural to want to dismiss some of the interpretations of QM (such as that natural laws are inherently probabilistic) as problems with our understanding, not as genuine features of reality. This is essentially a knee-jerk reaction to the oddness of QM and how it does not "mesh" with our everyday understanding of the world. However, science also informs us that we are the products of many years of evolution--and this evolution process equipped us to deal with one thing, and one thing only: survival. Our senses and reasoning faculties were not "designed" to help us humans apprehend truths about the world; rather, they were selected to enable humans qua systems to manipulate information in such a way that the systems preserve and replicate themselves. Luckily, knowing the truth--or approximating it--proved beneficial to the survival of these systems (these information processing patterns).

In simpler terms, more proto-humans who were able to correctly judge that there really is a savage tiger hiding in the grass over there successfully passed on their genes than those who hallucinated constantly. Or than those who had no knowledge whatsoever, who were not able to act on their knowledge, who had faulty reasoning processes, whatever.

Thus evolution tells us.

Unfortunately, to say "there really is a tiger over there" and leave it at that drastically oversimplifies the state of human existence. Because really, we don't know that there is or is not a tiger over there. All we know is that some collection of sights, sounds, scents, or inferences has caused us to believe that something over there can cause damage to us if we do not act accordingly. (Assume it's a hungry tiger and that we are defenseless in a savanna.) We may think to ourselves "There is a tiger," and we may believe "There is a tiger," and there is probably even a sense in which it is true that there is a tiger. But what we call a tiger is a convenient abstraction--a shorthand tag which bundles together a collection of concepts, memories, and/or feelings. So too, presumably, with our notion of existence--we have a certain understanding of what it means for something "to be" and "to be there." and we predicate this notion upon the abstraction "tiger."

[Edit as of 04-05-2009: I should mention that yes, Kant (and other philosophers) claim that existence is not a predicate. I do recognize that it's a contested notion and I disagree with the mainstream opinion; but I shan't defend it now.]

"Well, what of it?" I hear you say. "You're not telling us anything that the pioneering philosophers of the 17th-18th century didn't when they first speculated about our psychological workings; and you're barely even consistent with today's psychological theories."

Fair enough. But, if we can suppose that the tenets of natural selection are true, then we should firmly keep in mind that our knowledge...

....Something...

This post is dissolving into incoherency. And as usual I don't have the patience to fix it. I shouldn't even post it. But whatever.

Fancy

[Please forgive this amateur flight of fanciful, mystical indulgence. This comes from a diary entry I wrote over the summer. I decided I needed to post it somewhere. I can't say I believe these sentiments, but I have sometimes taken comfort in them.]

Maybe I am starting to feel... that somewhere, somehow, in a realm outside of conceivability, our essences intermingle. And our essences love each other, they love each other so much that it almost tears them apart, yet simultaneously unites them all the more gloriously for it. Our essences love and understand why all this tragedy is necessary, why the struggle is necessary for growth, why all is truly joy and not sorrow. Our beings love each other because they created each other, because they dreamed themselves into being, and they chose each other out of all the other possible existences because this way was right. We love each other eternally, devoutly, devotedly, passionately, irrepressibly.

We love each other and are each other. We love each other because we are each other--because of that sympathetic resonance from one core to another--a unification in rhythm that reveals our inherent, underlying unity. Our oneness.

... You and I are one, just as everything else is one. Yet somehow you are special, and I am special, and our love is special.

So we play this game--because it is the unmasking, the revealing, the unraveling, the development, the exploration, the uncertainty, the discovery--these things give us more meaning than jumping straight toward the answer.

Conflicting Sensations

In my last post, I wondered what a world which allowed simultaneous contradictions would look like.

Earlier this morning I had a very fascinating experience – shortly before I woke up, I became aware that I was simultaneously dreaming and yet in my bed at the same time. That is to say, I received two mutually exclusive sets of sensations, one informing me that I was lying on my back underneath sheets and covers with my eyes closed, the other that I was walking through some dreamscape with my eyes open.

I can hardly remember the details of the dream now, but still, the memory of that dual experience is striking. It makes me wonder – perhaps the brain is better equipped to deal with simultaneous contradictions than I'd thought, since I was apparently making sense of feeling that I was in two places at once. Both sensations felt as though they were centered on me, my brain, my consciousness/awareness/etc. It was as though I temporarily had two perspectives on "life" (even though, of course, only one of these was a veridical perspective), and I was able to feel both simultaneously.

So perhaps experiencing a contradiction would be a little like that, somehow.

Making Sense

Why should the world "make sense?"
Why should we expect that logic ought to apply to the real world?
It does not seem possible for it to be otherwise—but I wonder.

Perhaps logic is not applicable to the world. If that were so, we would abandon it, right? But, if we have to investigate the world to determine whether logic is useful or not, surely that revokes its a priori status.

Or, perhaps, the internal consistency of logic may retain apriority, while the applicability-to-the-real-world is what requires a posteriori verification. That is, suppose it is a necessary truth that is true within a given system, but perhaps we need to then go out and examine the world to tell whether the world agrees with that statement. Here is another way to think of it is: necessarily, logic is consistent within itself; contingently, the universe is such that logic may be fruitfully applied to it.

Could there be a world where the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM) does not hold? What would that be like? I cannot even imagine how something can be at once true and false.

(1) It is true that at this moment, at that location, there is an apple.
(2) It is false that at this moment, at that location, there is an apple.

Presumably these statements mean something like, "There is (is not) a spatiotemporal region constituted in such a way that it accords with an instantiation of our concept 'apple'." Could there be a world where a spatial region could be arranged in two substantially different ways simultaneously? If we try to imagine such a region, do we automatically start thinking of two separate spatial regions, and thus defeat ourselves by splitting into two an entity that ought to have stayed as one?

(3) The square is exhaustively red.
(4) The square is exhaustively blue.

If we accept (3), have we not already denied any possibility of it being otherwise? How could there be a world in which a square is both red all over and blue all over?

There is the occasional speculation that perhaps quantum mechanics has shown that contradictions inhere in reality—that particles really can occupy two places at once, or whatever. But this needs to be looked in to more before I say more on the subject.

So, what, it's just a fractal after all?

Click the above picture for a larger version with more details about what's actually being shown. Still, you should be able to make out the words labeling the left image "Brain cell" and the right image "The Universe," and you should be immediately struck by the startling similarity between the two. The brain cell is from a stained slide of a mouse brain, and the universe picture is from a computer simulation portraying how we think the universe developed (it must be a simulation, of course, since we can't very well photograph the universe from outside, nor travel back in time to witness its formation—or so we think).

These two pics were apparently put together by a David Constantine for a New York Times article (or something? that's where the image is hosted, at any rate), although I cannot find the article itself. The "universe" screenshot is from the Millennium Simulation, an international project meant to visually model the universe's development at an unprecedented level of detail and realism. The aforementioned site includes download links for the simulation video, but here's a YouTube link for those who want it.

What do we make of this striking resemblance betwixt neuron and universe? Well, part of me wants to immediately go off on an excited rant about how this confirms all these things I keep noticing about looping/circularity/recursion/self-reference/things-building-upon-themselves, and perhaps there's some sort of mystic significance to be drawn from it all.

But my more cautious side—which, generally speaking, holds more sway for me in these matters—has a few things to say. First and foremost, this is just a simulation; we have no genuine fact of the matter about what the universe, taken as a whole, looked like then or looks like now. Second, this was a simulation designed by humans, creatures who thrive on centralized, hierarchical methods of understanding nature. Seeking out (and, for that matter, imposing) structured hierarchies in nature is one of our most revered conceptual tools, sometimes to the hindrance of our own knowledge—for example, we spent the longest time trying to identify "pacemaker" or leading/guiding cells to account for the slime-mold's self-organizational abilities before Evelyn Fox Keller and Lee Segal showed how they (slime-molds) group together without centralized direction (see Steven Johnson's Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software for a very readable description of this and many related topics). I find it very likely that, assuming the universe simulation is not perfectly accurate, the simulator designers will tend to incorporate their own biological biases into their work, meaning that human simulation designers will favor simulations that mimic centralization and hierarchies.

Now, for all that, I still grant that the universe demonstrates this kind of arrangement in a number of different non-biological places as well: atoms have nuclei around which electrons orbit, planets and stars form from molecules accumulating around one point, planets orbit about stars, stars orbit about black holes—or whatever-the-hell is in the center of our galaxy. (Note that it pays to be cautious with these analogies: thinking of an atom in terms of planets revolving around a sun can lead to a number of unfortunate misconceptions).

Yes, systematized and centralized thinking is often very helpful.

The problem is, much like the search for theoretical unification and the willful employment of Occam's razor, perhaps it causes us to overlook other things, and see hierarchies where they may not necessarily exist.

(As a final point, there are quite a few images from the universe simulation one can select; given that there are probably thousands of neuron images out there too and given the, ahem, nebulous nature of the astronomical simulations, it can't be that hard to find a few that coincide fairly well.)

The Aftermath of Absurdity: H?

The title of this post ("The Aftermath of Absurdity: H?") contains an oblique reference to the futurist philosophy known as transhumanism. Transhumanism, as the Wiki link shows at the time of this writing, is occasionally represented/symbolized by the characters >H or H+ to indicate progressing beyond humanity in its current form (which is presumably symbolized by H). I will use H?, then, to indicate a curiosity or uncertainty about what exactly a human is in the first place, before we go about augmenting it.

What does it mean to be human?

It means to be a finite being {limited to subjectivity; prey to irrational impulses; hampered by the physical world} with aspirations toward divinity {sub species aeternitatis; pure rationality; transcending physicality}. Even those of an atheistic persuasion frequently seek this divinity in one way or another--and, in fact, the atheist strives to see through God's eyes much more often than the theist, since the theist normally considers the very thought blasphemous {Lucifer went astray when he desired God's position; humanity was punished when it built a tower meaning to ascend to the heavens; and, of course, original sin is the very product of seeing through God's eyes--the serpent tells Eve that knowledge of Good and Evil will make her godlike, and this is indeed what condemns humanity}. When the scientist desires to understand the operations of the universe beyond our immediate ability to perceive {knowledge of particles; the constituents of stars; DNA; functioning of the body}, when she desires a simple system of laws from which everything else may be derived {Grand Unified Theory}, she is desiring to transcend her senses (and all that which is given immediately and simply) to discover the true nature of reality--something which, presumably, only a god would have direct access to. What was the pre-human world like? How was it formed? What "makes" a plant grow? Does the universe exhibit counterfactual definiteness? If not, is Laplace's demon an impossibility? Would a god be subject to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, or to the observer effect?

The aspiration to know this, coupled with the apparent impossibility of truly knowing, is one of the things that makes the human absurd. So many humans for so long have wanted to know what goes on "behind the scenes," and wanted to transcend this paltry, unreliable chunk of biological flesh and bones. Science/technology is presumably our best bet to facilitate this transcendence: it allows us to cleverly sneak around the limitations placed upon us by Nature, augmenting our vision through microscopy and telescopy, detecting and analyzing electromagnetic waves beyond our senses' ability to register, measuring quantities which we could never observe unaided. And, with the deepening of our knowledge, the greater becomes our ability to construct devices which manipulate nature for our own ends. This is the transhumanist goal, and, to a lesser extreme, the intention of nearly every technological endeavor since the dawn of time: harness natural forces so that we may prolong our life, ease our suffering, enable our own enjoyment.

Ever since we first realized that we could more regularly and readily find food if we planted seeds in the right kind of earth, that we can use sticks and rocks and other things to help us hunt and defend ourselves, that we can warm ourselves with animal skins and leaves, we have been on this path. The path which will make us God, perhaps? The path toward perfection?

Perhaps not. Perhaps I again assume too much about the rest of humanity, and I ascribe lofty, grandiose ambitions where they may not be entertained. Perhaps most people want simple, material/social comforts; they are not concerned with knowledge, or even with "transcending" the physical body through virtual reality and cybernetic augmentation. But I think they must be, otherwise why would the promise of heaven be so enticing? Why else would television and computer/console games enjoy the intense, sometimes addicting popularity that they have?

But then, perhaps it is only philosophers who dream this way.

What does it mean to be a philosopher ("What does 'P?' mean")?

Among other things, the philosopher examines presuppositions which underly our most fundamental beliefs. She makes the implicit explicit. She wanders the borders of human thought, heroically grappling with those speculative concepts which are on the outer limits of our ability to reason about, attempting to "make sense" of it all. ("Make sense" is an appropriate way to describe the process: humans often rely on metaphors derived from our senses when attempting to apprehend an abstract concept. See Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being by George Lakoff and Raphael E. Núñez for some fascinating examples of how humans tend to map abstract mathematical concepts onto familiar experiential concepts.)

Now, the curious thing about philosophizing is its notorious "arm-chair" method of inquiry. In contrast with the empirical sciences, philosophy presumes to discover knowledge in a peculiar manner: reasoning built off of common intuitions, supplemented and refined by 1) the arguments of other philosophers, both those from the past and those contemporaneous; and 2) the discoveries handed down from the sciences. Rather than going out into the world and poking about, setting up controlled environments and acquiring measurements to discover regularities, the philosopher sits atop a mountain of academia, arguing vociferously about the ultimate truths of possibility and necessity. Truths applicable, presumably, to all modes of knowledge and all realms of inquiry--that is to say, truths applicable universally.

Early science - natural philosophy

This has not always been the case: during the Modern Era, "natural philosophy" gained prominence with its new-fangled focus on experimentation. A number of noteworthy philosophers either contributed directly to what we now call science or influenced it strongly with their theories, such as Descartes, Kant, Sir Francis Bacon, and Leibniz. Isaac Newton's legendary tome that lay the groundwork for classical physics was titled Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or "mathematical principles of natural philosophy." Newton and the other members of the Royal Society certainly considered their work to be "natural philosophy," and the continued use of "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" as a name for the longest running science journal in existence is a testament to that attitude. This was by no means exclusive to the Modern period: Aristotle may have been one of the world's first biologists, for all that his conclusions were rife with what we now know are accuracies. Copernicus and Galileo no doubt considered themselves philosophers, etc. etc.

However, with the rise of natural philosophy and its subsequent successes came a devaluation of regular philosophy. By the 19^th century (or perhaps the early 20^th at the latest), "natural philosophy" had separated even farther from traditional philosophy; it was hereafter known as "science." Strong borders began to appear between the two, spurred on by the anti-metaphysical, pro-empirical agenda of the logical positivists. Since then, science, along with every other field in academia, has undergone a radical process of specialization: we have the natural sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology, then the social sciences of psychology and sociology (and perhaps economics and political science, depending on where ones draws the line). Finally, we have mathematics and computer science, which are hardly empirical, yet they are of such a systematic nature and of such relevance to science proper that they often fall under the general category "science." This segregation of subject matter seems to have arisen as a method of shared labor, or divide-and-conquer strategy: as scientific knowledge accumulates, it becomes inefficient--perhaps impossible--for one person to stay abreast of the current research, and impossible furthermore to devote one's own time to experimentation and theorizing toward the many facets of science at once. Specialization in academia, not surprisingly, mirrored the socio-economic specialization that sprung forth during the Industrial Revolution in the form of division of labor, mechanization, and streamlined factory assembly. Not that it was a new concept: Plato's Republic, Hume's Treatise, and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (and no doubt other sources) advocated specialization as the key to efficiency; and, indeed, natural selection itself preceded every thinker through the specialization of cells within an organism and the specialization of individuals within a pack or colony. However, the exponential, near-simultaneous growth of technology, population, science, and the humanities in the last two hundred years exquisitely highlights the role specialization has played, and it is doubtful we would have made the progress we have without it.

Specialization, in conjunction with cooperation, is a wonderful thing which enables synergy--a mysterious emergent property resulting from the pooling and interaction of individual components. Unfortunately, specialization has its drawbacks too: namely, the walls which develop between the expert and the non-expert. Mathematics is a perfect example; from what I hear, mathematics is perhaps the most inaccessible field even to expert mathematicians: at the highest levels of specialization, there might be some ten or fifteen people in the world capable of fully understanding what a given paper tries to prove. A mathematician who studies one niche branch of mathematics may be completely lost when faced with another.

So what does this have to do with philosophy? Well, philosophy was the mother of all inquiry--rational speculation began here, but academic subjects splintered off into child fields that have since then gained their own prominence. In the case of the sciences, that prominence now dwarfs philosophy such that philosophy is the "handmaiden of science," at best, and useless dialectical gobbledygook at worst. And, the inaccessibility that is a byproduct of specialization exacerbates the divide by making it difficult for science to communicate with non-scientific disciplines (see C.P. Snow's Two Cultures for a notorious take on the gulf between the science culture and non-science culture).

So, I suppose I am interested in what relevance philosophy has to non-moral matters. Is there any point to philosophers talking about science and mathematics when many scientists and mathematicians pretty much ignore us? If we have ascertained that philosophy does not give results the way that science has, what role does it play for us? I am interested in science and mathematics, but I do not have the training nor time required to get a full grasp on what the experts are doing. Should this concern me? Is there anything that can be done about it?

Is there a way to be a better/improved/augmented philosopher ('P+'), and what is the relationship between 'P?' and 'H?'?

Something About Pride

One of the reasons that I think adults often find it more challenging to learn new things than children is that adults generally possess quite a number of expectations about what should be easy for them. There are certainly other factors: adults already have a solidified framework for their preexisting knowledge; so, any new information must be fit into this framework somehow, and sometimes the fit may not be perfect. There are also brain growth and adaptation differences between the age groups—the brain culls unused neurons as a child develops, so certain capacities get cut if they are never utilized. Consequently, an adult who never, say, learned to speak as a child may lose that ability forever (there are numerous cases of so-called feral child who suffer severe language and social impairments when returned to society.) ¹ Today, however, I'm interested in pride and how pride interferes with learning.

My own experience: I am currently taking a statistics class, and I am very aware that the mathematics and reasoning involved are quite rudimentary—the prerequisite is just one semester of calculus, and there have been only one or two places where knowledge about, say, integrals has been helpful. It's not as though basic calculus is a very difficult subject anyway, compared to God-knows-what-else that higher level mathematicians study (hyperbolic geometry? Abstract and linear algebra? Combinatorics?). Now, most of the time I do find it easy to understand and use the concepts in statistics, but every once in a while I get stuck on a particular problem or issue. And, at these points, my venomous pride comes into play: knowing that the material is simple, I berate myself all the more for not picking it up easily. I have to wonder though, is this ever helpful? Such self-castigation is counterproductive: I feel more frustrated and upset with myself, which in turn makes it more difficult to focus on the work, which again makes me upset and frustrated — and before you know it, we have a vicious cycle and/or positive feedback loop spiraling out of control.

Now, I began this post by speaking as though it is a bigger hindrance for adults than children (and it no doubt is). But, as it turns out, children are not always free from the detrimental effects of pride either.

Studies by Claudia M. Mueller and Carol S. Dweck indicate that complimenting children on their intelligence can actually have damaging rather than beneficial effects on their self-esteem and willingness to address difficult problems. This happens if the praise emphasizes ability rather than effort put forth.

From their article's abstract:

Contrary to this popular belief, six studies demonstrated that praise for intelligence had more negative consequences for students' achievement motivation than praise for effort. Fifth graders praised for intelligence were found to care more about performance goals relative to learning goals than children praised for effort. After failure, they also displayed less task persistence, less task enjoyment, more low-ability attributions, and worse task performance than children praised for effort. Finally, children praised for intelligence described it as a fixed trait more than children praise for hard work, who believed it to be subject to improvement.²

Part of the very real problem is that children (and, of course, adults too) want to feel and look smart, particularly if they have been led to believe that they are smart. Sometimes this will incline a child to favor those activities which are easiest in order to maintain their smart image. After all, surely only ungifted plebians have to actually struggle in order to learn things — not like those brainiacs who breeze through the most abstruse material with the greatest of ease. Here's another quote from article's prepatory discussion:

For example, Dweck and her associates have demonstrated that children who hold performance goals are likely to sacrifice potentially valuable learning opportunities if these opportunities hold the risk of making errors and do not ensure immediate good performance (Elliott & Dweck, 1988). That is, "being challenged" and "learning a lot" are rejected in favor of "seeming smart" by children who subscribe to a performance orientation (Mueller & Dweck, 1997).

In other words, children who are overly focused on doing well (rather than trying hard) are reluctant to try new things, particularly if failure might compromise their image as "intelligent." Unfortunately, opening oneself to the possibility of failure is a very necessary part of trying any new activity: closing oneself off from potentially valuable but unfamiliar experiences may wind up stunting one's intellectual growth. (I plan to write more on this subject in the near future.)

Another fascinating point that Mueller and Dweck bring up is how the way children are praised can affect how they conceptualize intelligence. Children praised for their good performance (rather than their hard work) tend to see intelligence as a fixed, static trait rather than something which can be developed and improved. Something along the lines of, "either you're born with it or you ain't" — which seems to be an unfortunately all-too-common view for the average person. Failure and success are then seen in the light of ability rather than effort.

Society really doesn't help with this. We venerate the myth of genius, the prodigy, the wonder-child who's "always right" through some innate, Nature-given powers. However, I think the reality is that these cases (if they can even be said to exist) are very, very, very rare. So rare, in fact, that I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people who are thought of as "geniuses" really did not possess much more in the way of "raw brainpower" or "talent" than the average person. Thomas Edison said, "Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration" — and if you don't believe a prolific inventor of his caliber, who can you believe? Vincent van Gogh worked like a fanatic at honing his painting skills: he may have been talented to begin with, but his brilliance may have been moreover due to his hard work and perseverance. If one examines Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton's lives, one does not necessarily find early displays of talent so much as early displays of intense, self-motivated interest in understanding the world.

To return to my own problems with my statistics course: clearly it does not benefit me to get worked up over my own failings. High standards can be very helpful at times as something to aim towards, but I do not see any compelling reason to allow rampant self-flagellation in the process. The key is to dedicate energy and thought toward growth; be aware when you fall short of your target, but why be cruel to yourself if you don't meet it? Does needless criticism help you to grow more? I doubt it. When I worry that I am dense for not comprehending a subject easily, I am distracting myself from what is really important — namely, that I engage the material, attempt to absorb it with an open mind, and enjoy the experience.

The same ought to apply for children: maintain high expectations, but only if you can present these expectations in a friendly, encouraging manner. Teach them to enjoy struggling — putting forth effort — rather than gold stars and A+'s. Teach them not to fret so much about intellectual pride.


¹ Actually, feral children are sometimes able to develop language skills later in life, but the process can be slow and difficult. Children returned to society before the age of about 7 seem to have the best chances of recovery. http://www.feralchildren.com provides more information, with a number of references to published sources.

² "Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation and Performance". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, No. 1 (1998) : 33-52.